Jordan Peele’s ‘Get Out’ Is The Highest Grossing Film For An Original Screenplay, And He Wants You To Watch It Twice

Less than a month after its release, Peele became the first black writer-director to earn $100 million in his debut film.

“Get Out,” is one of the first horror films with a plot explicitly driven by racism, but its significance speaks to another fundamental truth, Clay Cane reported for CNN: Hollywood has no idea what audiences want to pay for. Cane credits Peele with creating a new genre.

Now “Get Out” has reached yet another milestone, becoming the highest grossing debut film for a writer-director with an original screenplay. Peele’s film, which just started playing in theaters overseas, has a worldwide gross of more than $156 million, Okay Player reported.

Made on a $4.6 million budget, “Get Out” earned $34 million in its opening weekend. And because horror always does well on home video according to Uproxx, “Get Out” stands to make a lot more money. It’s release date is planned for May 9 on Digital HD, and May 23 on Blu-ray, DVD, and On Demand from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

Peele said in a Fox 5DC video interview, “I wanted to make a movie you have to watch two times.”

He may get his wish.

If you saw and loved the film in movie theaters, home is the only place you’ll be able to see the “Get Out” alternate ending. Home viewers will also be able to see scenes that did not make the final cut and commentary by Peele.

The alternate ending is “much darker” than the original, according to Uproxx:

Peele (originally) decided that “the ending needed to transform into something that gives us a hero, that gives us an escape, gives us a positive feeling when we leave this movie. If “Get Out” didn’t have the crowd-pleasing ending, who knows if it would be the 215th fastest movie to $100 million?

“Get Out” is known as the best reviewed movie of 2017 on Rotten Tomatoes to date, Broadway World reported.

The film stars Daniel Kaluuya as Chris, a black man who has been dating a white woman, Rose (Allison Williams). She hasn’t told her parents about his race. The couple make a trip to meet her parents for a weekend, but there is more than just racial tension waiting for him.

It’s a film with perfect timing, Cane said in a CNN report:

In 1982, it was the ‘me generation,’ capitalism at all costs, setting the stage for the plot line of suburban greed in “Poltergeist.” In 1996, America was afraid of the dirty, grunge-loving teen. Hence, the angry generation X kids of “Scream” were brutally murdered, paying for their sex, drugs and bad attitudes. Now, our biggest fear is ideology. We are in a cultural civil war, with race at center stage, and “Get Out” perfectly captures the fears mainstream, white, middle America holds of liberalism and the browning of America. It also captures the fears that liberals and brown America hold of mainstream, white, middle America. Mark my words, social horror is the new trend. However, I doubt anyone will be able to capture Peele’s magic. Thankfully, Peele has four more social films in the works. He has single-handedly created a new genre — and as a black filmmaker made history in the process.

“Get Out” arrived in theaters at one of the most politically charged moments in memory, LA Times reported. It immediately fascinated audiences. “Op-ed writers and cultural critics have probed what the movie’s success says about the state of race relations at the dawn of the Donald Trump era. Moviegoers have shared countless ‘sunken place’ Internet memes and other ‘Get Out’-inspired fan art across social media.”

Unknown as a writer-director, Peele is known mainly for Comedy Central’s “Key & Peele.” He spent years on the show “honing his ability to dissect issues of race through cutting, absurdist satire,” LA Times reported.

In March Peele was named Director of the Year at CinemaCon. He has “instantaneously become a force to reckon with as a gifted and enormously talented director and filmmaker,” said Mitch Neuhauser, CinemaCon managing director, in a statement. “He has audiences and critics around the globe enamored and spellbound, dare I say hypnotized, with his wildly inventive directorial debut.”

Horror movies are usually “high calorie, low nutrition” — not this one

Horror movies might have a big opening weekend but they usually drop 60 or 70 percent in their second weekend, said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at the box office tracking firm comScore. “They’re like candy – high calorie, low nutrition. But ‘Get Out’ is a high-nutrition movie,” he said. “This has really been lightning in a bottle,”

“Get Out” dropped just 15 percent in its second weekend and has remained in the top five at the box office for four weeks, performing well not only with younger audiences but across a range of demographics, including people who normally stay away from scary movies, LA Times reported:

“I’ve been encouraged that everybody is turning out for this movie,” said “Get Out” producer Sean McKittrick, who first heard Peele’s pitch for the film a few years ago over coffee and immediately agreed to help make it. “Another filmmaker we’re working with told me he couldn’t get his grandmother-in-law, who’s in her 80s, to stop talking about this movie. Her retirement community took a bus to go see it.”

About Dana Sanchez

Dana Sanchez was born in South Africa and is a U.S. citizen. After working in advertising, she went back to school and earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of South Florida. As a business writer, she won regional and national writing awards. As editor of a daily newspaper, she coordinated staff writers, freelancers and photographers in the fast-paced environment of daily news. Dana was an editor at Moguldom Media Group for four years, helping to build and manage a team of staff and freelance writers. She works now on Moguldom.com for Nubai Ventures. A long-distance hiker and cyclist, she writes about the business of technology.

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